Happy 100th Birthday to Jamaica Station!

Change in Jamaica is a phrase that every Long Islanders has probably heard at least once in their lifetime.  And it's a remarkable thing--Changing in Jamaica.  For if you're on a train that's heading to one of the LIRR's three western terminals (Penn Station, Atlantic Terminal, or Hunterspoint Avenue/Long Island City) and you want to go to another, all you have to do is walk across the platform at Jamaica to a train on the other track.  Quick, easy, timed connections is what makes a railroad's 3 different terminals get people where they need to go so nicely.

And people have been "Changing in Jamaica" for a long time now, because today is Jamaica Station's 100th Anniversary!  The very first train that left the Jamaica Station as we know it today left on Sunday, March 9, 1913 for Speonk.  Since then Jamaica Station has seen just about 18 million trains stop at its platforms in it's 100 year history.

Jamaica Station on it's opening day, March 9, 1913 (Photo credit: MTA)

Jamaica Station as we know it today was designed by Kenneth Murchison.  I was originally built between 1912 and 1913 (back when capital projects didn't take half a century to get done).  This station as we know it today was built as a replacement for two former stations in this area--the original Jamaica station (aka "Old Jamaica") and the South Side Railroad's Jamaica-Beaver Street Station (this was back in the time when train travel on Long Island was ran by more than one company, the LIRR and the South Side Railroad).  So the LIRR--in an effort to consolidate things--built this new station and closed the old ones down.  During this process, the LIRR also constructed HALL and JAY interlockings east and west of the station to connect everything and line it up properly. These interlockings and their layouts form the crux of how Jamaica works and I'll go over that in depth when their interlocking walkthrough turn comes up (on June 5th and 26th, respectively).

Jamaica, like many things on the LIRR, started out nice, then as the years went by and the LIRR had some financial trouble and funds for things like the upkeep of stations went dry Jamaica station deteriorated into a fairly crummy condition.  For years Jamaica station wasn't really a nice place to be (or a safe place to be, for that matter).  When the LIRR came into some money in later years they tried to fix it up a tad, but it was never really a great place to catch a train.

So in 2001 the LIRR embarked on a massive, five year expansion/renovation project.  The project included the construction of new platforms, a new pedestrian bridge, a new central elevator bank that connects all the LIRR station to the street and to the subway station, a new mezzanine connecting to the recently opened AirTrain JFK service and a new fancy steel and glass canopy over the tracks.  Five years and $387 million later, Jamaica station is now quite the station.  It's clean, well lit, has plenty of wide staircases, elevators, and escalators, is completely ADA accessible, easier to get around, and just an all around nicer place to be now.  Here are some photos from LIRR History.com from 2002 when Jamaica Station was undergoing the renovations.

Jamaica as we know it today consists of nine tracks and five platforms.  Tracks 1-2-3 are traditionally used by westbound trains, with trains to Penn Station ordinarily departing from Track 2, trains to Atlantic Terminal going off of track 3, and trains to HPA/LIC sometimes leaving from track 1.  Tracks 6-7-8 are normally used by eastbound trains, with track 7 normally used by trains from Penn Station, track 6 for trains from Atlantic Terminal, and track 8 for trains normally coming from HPA/LIC/Richmond Hill yards.  Why these tracks are laid out this way and why the whole Jamaica station complex works so well is a whole process I'll explain when we get to JAY and HALL's interlocking walkthorugh's in June.

My historical LIRR photos archive is very small, but if you would like to see some photos of Jamiaca Station from "back in the day" check out Steve Lynch's Trains Are Fun.com Jamiaca station page for some excellent historical photos.  I also took a ton of photos of the current Jamaica station as it is today earlier in the week but I accidentally left my camera and all of the photos at my office (do'oh!) so maybe I'll update this post next week when I get back to my office with the photos I had taken.  But for now, here are a couple of Creative Commons images of Jamaica station today:

A view of the new arch and overpass at Jamaica Station from 2007.

A look at Jamaica station from tracks 2-3 as the sun sets one weekday evening.

A passenger waits to board a westbound train on Track 1 at Jamaica (Photo credit: Creative Commons/Vince Alongi)

The new arch and escalators at Jamaica Station (Photo credit: Creative Commons/Joe Shlabotnik)

A look at Jamaica Station's tracks 7 and 8 before the 2001-2006 renovation program.  (Photo credit: Flickr user "lhoon")

So as you can probably tell comparing the historical photos linked above to the current photos shown here, Jamaica station has certainly come a long way, and it's in excellent condition now and ready to serve passengers (and people "changing at Jamaica") for the next 100 years.